Name:	OutRun series (4 titles) OutRun Turbo OutRun OutRun 2019 (aka Junkers High) OutRunners
Author/Vendor:	Sega
Released:	various
Type:	Racing (auto)
Language:	English
Premise:	Back in the Stone Age of full-color arcade games (that would be post-Reagan), Sega decided to reinvent the first-person racing game. The end result was Super Hang-On, and it proved so popular that they decided to retool it as an auto racing game, tweaking the game engine in the process for better performance. Thus was the road racing legend known as OutRun born. In this series, you (and oftimes your girlfriend riding shotgun) get to take part in a long cross-country road race that measures not only your endurance but your ability to stay on the road while avoiding various obstacles, such as other vehicles coming at and from behind you. Spawned several successors and many, many imitators; however, its the original that everybody from that time remembers.
Impressions:	The one and only - Sega's road racing classic! All of the entries are quite faithful to their arcade originals, which means that they have the same bonuses and flaws. Get the original because it's a classic; get the others because they're cool, too.
Variations:	OutRun (1991, ported straight from the arcade, complete with your girlfriend riding shotgun, the multi-leg California road race, and your choice of the original BGM tunes - kinda slow compared to the original, and I tend to prefer the faster Amiga version, but still enjoyable) Turbo OutRun (1992, same idea as before but this time you're in a race across the United States - not all that different gameplaywise, but one can note slight improvements in the game engine that would be more fully realized in the next entry) OutRun 2019 (1993 by Sims Co. LTD, released in Japan and certain other markets under the title Junkers High - this time the road race is set in the future, but you get to drive a turbo-assisted rocket-powered car on a rather difficult track that has some new hazards not seen in the earlier entries) OutRunners (1994, ported straght from the arcade - it's the classic OutRun revisited but adds a split-screen two-player head-to-head mode and gives you a small selection of cars frim which to choose - this is in most fans' opinion the best game of the Genesis series) There is a fifth game in the series, OutRun Europa, but it was ported to the Sega Master System instead.
Recommended Emu:	KGen 98